9 THE MOLDY FUR EXPERIMENT

CHAPTER 9 THE MOLDY FUR EXPERIMENT I grabbed my bags of monster fur and my science notebook and went into the kitchen. I started writing down all the bits of my experiment so I wouldn't forget what I'd done. It would probably take a day or two before I could even tell if the mold wasn't growing on some of my test fur. I could

definitely forget a lot in two days. QUESTION: What will stop the mold from growing on Gorp's fur? Now I needed to make my guess. Which preservative did I think would work? Most of the stuff in the kitchen used salt. It seemed to work for an awful lot of things. So it would probably work on monster fur too. HYPOTHESIS: I think salt will stop the mold from growing on

Gorp's fur. All right. Now to decide how much of each preservative to add. I needed to add the same amount each time. Let's see. Maybe two teaspoons would be enough? That seemed good to me. PROCEDURE: 1. Put the Same amount of Gorp's fur in each ziplock bag. 2. Don't add anything to one bag. Add 2 teaspoons of oil to another. Add 2 teaspoons of vinegar to another. Add 2 teaspoons of salt to another. Add 2 teaspoons of sugar to

another. 3. Seal the bags. 4. Put the bags in the same place in the barn and check every day to See if mold grows. Phew. That was a lot of writing. I shook out my hand. First, I sealed the bag with nothing but fur in it. I labeled it so I could remember that it was the one where I didn't add anything. The nothing bag should grow mold like normal. In a few days, I could hold it next to the other bags to see if they were doing a better job of stopping the mold.

I got a new bag and added two teaspoons of vinegar and swished it around until all of the monster fur in the bag was wet. I crinkled up my nose. Blech. I quickly sealed the bag so I wouldn't have to smell it anymore. I labeled it vinegar. I did the same thing for the oil bag.

Things were going just fine until I added sugar to the fourth bag. "Ergh! This isn't working, Sassafras. The sugar keeps falling to the bottom of the bag. Most of it isn't even touching the fur." Maybe it would be fine? No. It was definitely bugging me that it wasn't coating the fur like the vinegar and oil had. Whump! Suddenly a big ball of fluffy fur was next to me